THEOSOPHISTS are very often, and very unjustly too,
accused of infidelity and even of Atheism. This is a grave error, especially
with regard to the latter charge.

In a large society, composed of so many races and
nationalities, in an association wherein every man and woman is left to believe
in whatever he or she likes, and to follow or not to follow—just as they
please—the religion they were born and brought up in, there is but little room
left for Atheism. As for “infidelity,” it becomes a misnomer and a fallacy.

To show how
absurd is the charge, in any case, it is sufficient to ask our traducers to
point out to us, in the whole civilized world, that person who is not regarded
as an “infidel” by some other person belonging to some different creed. Whether
one moves in highly respectable and orthodox circles, or in a so-called
heterodox “society,” it is all the same. It is a mutual accusation, tacitly, if
not openly, expressed; a kind of a mental game at shuttlecock and battledore
flung reciprocally, and in polite silence, at each other’s heads. In sober
reality, then, no theosophist any more than a non-theosophist can be an
infidel; while, on the other hand, there is no human being living who is not an
infidel in the opinion of some sectarian or other. As to the charge of Atheism,
it is quite another question.

What is Atheism, we ask, first of all? Is it
disbelief in and denial of the existence of a God, or Gods, or simply the
refusal to accept a personal deity on the somewhat gushy definition of R. Hall,
who explains Atheism as “a ferocious system” because, “it leaves nothing above
(?) us to excite awe, nor around us to awaken tenderness” (!) If the former,
then most of our members—the hosts in India, Burmah, and elsewhere—would demur,
as they believe in Gods and supernal beings, and are in great awe of some of
them. Nor would a number of Western Theosophists fail to confess their full
belief in Spirits, whether spatial or planetary, ghosts or angels. Many of us
accept the existence of high and low Intelligences, and of Beings as great as
any “personal” God. This is no occult secret. What we confessed to in the
November LUCIFER (editorial), we reiterate again.

Most of us believe in the survival of the Spiritual
Ego, in Planetary Spirits and Nirmanakayas, those great Adepts of the past
ages, who, renouncing their right to Nirvana, remain in our spheres of being,
not as “spirits” but as complete spiritual human Beings. Save their corporeal,
visible envelope, which they leave behind, they remain as they were, in order
to help poor humanity, as far as can be done without sinning against Karmic
law. This is the “Great Renunciation,” indeed; an incessant, conscious self-sacrifice
throughout æons and ages till that day when the eyes of blind mankind will open
and, instead of the few, all will see the universal truth.

These Beings, may well be regarded as God and
Gods—if they would but allow the fire in our hearts, at the thought of that
purest of all sacrifices, to be fanned into the flame of adoration, or the
smallest altar in their honour. But they will not. Verily, “the secret heart is
fair Devotion’s (only) temple,” and any other, in this case, would be no better
than profane ostentation.

Now with regard to other invisible Beings, some of
whom are still higher, and others far lower on the scale of divine evolution.
To the latter we will have nothing to say; the former will have nothing to say
to us: for we are as good as non-existent for them.

The homogeneous can take no cognizance of the

heterogeneous; and unless we learn to shuffle off
our mortal coil and commune with them “spirit to spirit,” we can hardly hope to
recognize their true nature.

Moreover, every true Theosophist holds that the
divine HIGHER SELF of every mortal man is of the same essence as the essence of
these Gods. Being, moreover, endowed with free-will, hence having, more than
they, responsibility, we regard the incarnated EGO as far superior to, if not
more divine than, any spiritual INTELLIGENCE still awaiting incarnation.
Philosophically, the reason for this is obvious, and every metaphysician of the
Eastern school will understand it. The incarnated EGO has odds against it which
do not exist in the case of a pure divine Essence unconnected with matter; the
latter has no personal merit, whereas the former is on his way to final
perfection through the trials of existence, of pain and suffering. The shadow
of Karma does not fall upon that which is divine and unalloyed, and so
different from us that no relation can exist between the two.

As to those deities which are regarded in the Hindu
esoteric Pantheon as finite and therefore under the sway of Karma, no true
philosopher would ever worship them; they are signs and symbols.

Shall we then be regarded as atheists, only because
while believing in Spiritual Hosts—those beings who have to be worshipped in
their collectivity as a personal God—we reject them absolutely as representing
the ONE Unknown? and because we affirm that the eternal Principle, the ALL in
ALL, or the Absoluteness of the Totality, cannot be expressed by limited words,
nor be symbolized by anything with conditioned and qualificative attributes?
Shall we, more over, permit to pass without protest the charge against us of
idolatry—by the Roman Catholics, of all men? They, whose religion is as pagan
as any other of the solar and element worshippers; whose creed was framed out
for them, cut and dry, ages before the year I of Christian era; and whose
dogmas and rites are the same as those of every idolatrous nation—if any such
nation still exists in spirit anywhere at this day. Over the whole face of the
earth, from the North to the South Pole, from the frozen gulfs of Northland to
the torrid plains of Southern India, from Central America to Greece and
Chaldea, the Solar Fire, as the symbol of divine Creative Power, of Life and
Love, was worshipped. The union of the Sun (male element)with Earth and the
Water (matter, the female element) was celebrated in the temples of the whole
Universe.

If Pagans had a feast commemorative of this
union—which they celebrated nine months ere the Winter Solstice, when Isis was
said to have conceived—so have the Roman Catholic Christians. The great and
holy day of the Annunciation, the day on which the Virgin Mary “found favour
with(her) God” and conceived “the Son of the Highest,” is kept by Christians
nine months before Christmas.

Hence, the worship of the Fire, lights and lamps in
the churches. Why? Because Vulcan, the fire-God, married Venus, the daughter of
the Sea; that the Magi watched over the sacred fire in the East, and the
Virgin-Vestals in the West. The Sun was the “Father”; Nature, the eternal
Virgin Mother: Osiris and Isis, Spirit-Matter, the latter worshipped under each
of its three states by Pagan and Christian. Hence the Virgins—even in
Japan—clothed with star-spangled blue, standing on the lunar crescent, as
symbolical of female Nature (in her three elements of Air, Water, Earth); Fire
or the male Sun, fecundating her yearly with his radiant beams (the “cloven
tongues like as of fire” of the Holy Ghost).

In Kalevala the oldest epic Poem of the Finns, of
the pre-Christian antiquity of which there remains no doubt in the minds of scholars,
we read of the gods of Finland, the gods of air and water, of fire and the
forest, of Heaven and the Earth. In the superb translation by J. M. Crawford,
in Rune L (Vol. II) the reader will find the whole legend of the Virgin Mary in
Mariatta childof beauty,

Virgin-Mother of
theNorthland. . .

Ukko, the great Spirit,
whose abode is in Yûmäla, the sky or Heaven, chooses the Virgin Mariatta as his
vehicle to incarnate through her in a Man-God. She becomes pregnant by plucking
and eating a red berry (marja), when, repudiated by her parents, she gives
birth to a “Son immortal,” in the manger of a stable.

Then the “Holy Babe” disappears, and Mariatta is in
search of him. She asks a star, “the guiding star of Northland,” where her
“holy baby lies hidden,” but the star answers her angrily:--

If I knew, I would not tell thee;

‘Tis thy child that me created

In the cold to shine
forever. . . .

and tells the Virgin
nothing. Nor will the golden moon help her, because, Mariatta’s babe having
created her, left her in the great sky:--

Here
to wander in the darkness,

All
alone at eve towander,

Shining for the good of
others. . . .

It is only the “Silver Sun”
who, taking pity upon the Virgin-Mother, tells her:--

Yonder
is thy goldeninfant,

There
thy holy babe liessleeping,

Hidden
to his belt inwater,

Hidden in the reeds
andrushes.She takes the holy baby home, and while the mother calls him
“Flower,”

Others named him Son of Sorrow.

Is this a post-Christian legend? Not at all; for,
as said, it is essentially pagan in origin and recognized as pre-Christian.

Hence, with such data in hand in literature, the
ever-recurring taunts of idolatry and atheism, of infidelity and paganism, ought
to cease. The term idolatry, moreover, is of Christian origin. It was used by
the early Nazarenes, during the 2½ centuries of our era, against those nations
who used temples and churches, statues and images, because they, the early
Christians themselves, had neither temples, statues, nor images, all of which
they abhorred. Therefore the term “idolatrous” fits far better our accusers
than ourselves, as this article will show. With Madonnas on every cross road,
their thousands of statues, from Christs and Angels in every shape down to
Popes and Saints, it is rather a dangerous thing for a Catholic to taunt any
Hindu or Buddhist with idolatry. The assertion has now to be proved.

II

We may begin by the origin of the word God. What is
the real and primitive meaning of the term? Its meanings and etymologies are as
many as they are

various. One of them shows the word derived from an
old Persian and mystic term goda. It means “itself,” or something
self-emanating from the absolute Principle. The root word was godan—whence
Wodan, Woden, and Odin, the Oriental radical having been left almost unaltered
by the Germanic races. Thus they made of it gott, from which the adjective
gut—“good,” as also the term gotz, or idol, were derived. In ancient Greece,
the word Zeus and Theos led to the Latin Deus. This goda, the emanation, is
not, and cannot be, identical with that from which it radiates, and is,
therefore, but a periodical, finite manifestation.

Old Aratus, who wrote “full of Zeus are all the
streets and the markets of man; full of Him is the sea and the harbours,” did
not limit his deity to such a temporary reflection on our terrestrial plane as
Zeus, or even its antetype—Dyaus, but meant, indeed, the universal, omnipresent
Principle.

Before the radiant god Dyaus (the sky) attracted
the notice of man, there was the Vedic Tad (“that”) which, to the Initiate and
philosopher, would have no definite name, and which was the absolute Darkness
that underlies every manifested

radiancy. No more than the mythical Jupiter—the
latter reflection of Zeus—could Surya, the Sun, the first manifestation in the
world of Maya and the Son of Dyaus, fail to be termed “Father” by the ignorant.
Thus the Sun became very soon interchangeable and one with Dyaus; for some, the
“Son,” for others, the “Father” in the radiant sky; Dyaus-Pitar, the Father in
the Son, and the Son in the Father, truly shows, however, his finite origin by
having the Earth assigned to him as a wife. It is during the full decadence of
metaphysical philosophy that Dyâva-prithivi “Heaven and Earth” began to be
represented as the Universal cosmic parents, not alone of men, but of the gods
also. From the original conception, abstract and poetical, the ideal cause fell
into grossness.

Dyaus, the sky, became very soon Dyaus or Heaven,
the abode of the “Father,” and finally, indeed, that Father himself. Then the
Sun, upon being made the symbol of the latter, received the title of Dina-Kara
“day-maker,” of Bhaskara

“light-maker,” now the Father of his Son, and vice
versa. The reign of ritualism and of anthropomorphic cults was henceforth
established and finally degraded the whole world, retaining supremacy to the
present civilized age.

Such being the common origin, we have but to
contrast the two deities—the god of the Gentiles and the god of the Jews—on
their own revealed WORD; and judging them on their respective definitions of
themselves, conclude intuitively which is the nearest to the grandest ideal. We
quote Colonel Ingersoll, who Jehovah and Brahma parallel with each other. The
former, “from the clouds and darkness of Sinai,” said to the Jews:--

Thou shalt have no other gods before me. . . . Thou
shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them; for I, the Lord thy God, am
a jealous God, visiting

the
iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth
generation of them that hate me.” Contrast this with the words put by the

Hindu
into the mouth of Brahm: “I am the same to all mankind. They who honestly serve
other gods, involuntarily worship me. I am he who partaketh of all worship, and
I am the reward of all worshippers.”

Compare these passages. The first, a dungeon where
crawl the things begot of jealous slime; the other, great as the domed
firmament inlaid with suns. . . .

The “first” is the god who haunted Calvin’s fancy,
when he added to his doctrine of predestination that of Hell being paved with
the skulls of unbaptized infants. The beliefs and dogmas of our churches are
far more blasphemous in the ideas they imply than those of the benighted
Heathen. The amours of Brahmâ, under the form of a buck, with his own daughter,
as a deer, or of Jupiter with Leda, under that of a swan, are grand allegories.
They were never given out as a revelation, but known to have been the products
of the poetic fancy of Hesiod and other mythologists. Can we say as much of the
immaculate daughters of the god of the Roman Catholic Church—Anna and Mary?
Yet, even to breathe that the Gospel narratives are allegories too, as they
would be most sacrilegious were they accepted in their dead letter, constitutes
in a Christian born the acme of blasphemy!

Verily, they may whitewash and mask as much as they
like the god of Abraham and Isaac, they shall never be able to disprove the
assertion of Marcion, who denied that the God of Hate could be the same as the
“Father of Jesus.” Heresy or not, but the “Father in Heaven” of the Churches
remained since then a hybrid creature; a mixture between the Jove of the Pagan
mobs and the “jealous God” of Moses, exoterically the SUN, whose abode is in
Heaven, or the sky, esoterically.

Does he not give birth to LIGHT “that shineth in
Darkness,” to the Day, the bright Dyaus, the Son, and is he not the MOST
HIGH—Deus Cœlum? And is it not again Terra, the “Earth,” the ever immaculate as
the ever prolific Virgin who,

fecundated by
the ardent embraces of her “Lord”—the fructifying rays of the Sun, becomes, in
this terrestrial sphere, the mother of all that lives and breathes on her vast
bosom? Hence, the sacredness of her products in Ritualism—the bread and the
wine. Hence also, the ancient messis, the great sacrifice to the goddess of
harvest (Ceres Eleusina, the Earth again): messis, for the Initiates, missa for
the profane,1 now transformed into the Christian mass or liturgy. The ancient
oblation of the fruits of the Earth to the Sun, the Deus Aitissimus, “the Most
High,” the symbol of the G. A. O. T. U. of the Masons to this day, became the
foundation of the most important ritual among the ceremonies of the new
religion. The worship offered to Osiris-Isis (the Sun andthe Earth),2 to Bel
and the cruciform Astarte of the Babylonians; to Odin or Thor and Friga, of the
Scandinavians; to Belen and the Virgo Paritura of the Celts; to Apollo and the
Magna Mater of the Greeks; all these couples having the same meaning, passed
bodily to, and were transformed by, the Christians into the Lord God or the
Holy Ghost descending upon the Virgin Mary.

Deus Sol or Solus, the Father, was made
interchangeable with the Son: the “Father” in his noon glory, he became the
“Son” at Sun-rise, when he was said to “be born.” This idea received its full
apotheosis annually on December the 25th, during the Vernal
Solstice, when the Sun—hence the solar gods of all the nations—was said to be
born. Natalis solis invicte. And the “precursor” of the

resurrecting Sun grows, and waxes strong, until the
vernal equinox, when the god Sol begins its annual course, under the sign of
the Ram or the Lamb, the first lunar week of the month. The 1st of
March was feasted throughout all pagan Greece, as its neomenia was sacred to
Diana. Christian nations celebrate their Easter, for the same reason, on the
first Sunday that follows the full moon, at

the Vernal Equinox. With the festivals of the
Pagans, the canonicals of their priests and Hierophants were copied by
Christendom. Will this be denied? In his “Life of Constantine” Eusebius
confesses thus saying, perhaps, the only truth he ever uttered in his life—that
“in order to render Christianity more attractive to the Gentiles, the priests
(of Christ) adopted the exterior vestments and ornaments used in the pagan
cult.” He might have added “their rituals” and dogmas also.

III

It is a matter of History—however unreliable the
latter—for a number of facts preserved by ancient writers corroborate it, that
Church Ritualism and

Freemasonry have sprung from the same source, and
developed hand in hand.

But as Masonry, even with its errors and later
innovations, was far nearer the truth than the Church, the latter began very
soon her persecutions against it. Masonry was, in its origin, simply archaic
Gnosticism, or early esoteric Christianity; Church Ritualism was, and is,
exoteric paganism, pure and simple—remodelled, we do not say reformed. Read the
works of Ragon, a Mason who forgot more than the Masons of to-day know. Study,
collating them together, the casual but numerous statements made by Greek and
Latin writers, many of whom were Initiates, most learned Neophytes and
partakers of the Mysteries. Read finally the elaborate and venomous slanders of
the Church Fathers against the Gnostics, the Mysteries and their Initiates—and
you may end by unravelling the truth.

It is a few philosophers who, driven by the
political events of the day, tracked and persecuted by the fanatical Bishops of
early Christianity—who had yet neither fixed ritual nor dogmas nor Church—it is
these Pagans who founded the latter.

Blending most ingeniously the truths of the
Wisdom-religion with the exoteric fictions so dear to the ignorant mobs, it is
they who laid the first foundations of ritualistic Churches and of the Lodges
of modern Masonry. The latter fact was demonstrated by Ragon in his ANTE-OMNIÆ
of the modern Liturgy compared with the ancient Mysteries, and showing the
rituals conducted by the early Masons; the former may be ascertained by a like
comparison of the Church canonicals, the sacred vessels, and the festivals of
the Latin and other Churches, with those of the pagan nations. But Churches and
Masonry have widely diverged since the days when both were one. If asked how a
profane can know it, the answer comes: ancient and modern Freemasonry are an
obligatory study with every Eastern Occultist.

Masonry, its paraphernalia and modern innovations
(the Biblical Spirit in it especially) notwithstanding, does good both on the
moral and physical planes—or did so, hardly ten years ago, at any rate.3 It was
a true ecclesia in the sense

of fraternal union and mutual help, the only
religion in the world, if we regard the term as derived from the word religare,
“to bind” together, as it made all men belonging to it “brothers”—regardless of
race and faith. Whether with the

enormous wealth at its command it could not do far
more than it does now, is no business of ours.

We see no visible, crying evil from this institution,
and no one yet, save the Roman Church, has ever been found to show that it did
any harm. Can Church Christianity say as much? Let ecclesiastical and profane
history answer the question. For one, it has divided the whole mankind into
Cains and Abels; it has slaughtered millions in the name of her God—the Lord of
Hosts, truly, the ferocious Jehovah Sabbaoth—and instead of giving an impetus
to civilization, the favourite boast of her followers—it has retarded it during
the long and weary Mediæval ages. It is only under the relentless assaults of
science and the revolt of men trying to free themselves, that it began to lose
ground and could no longer arrest enlightenment. Yet has it not softened, as
claimed, the “barbarous spirit of Heathendom”? We say no, most emphatically.

It is Churchianity with its odium theologicum,
since it could no longer repress human progress, which infused its lethal
spirit of intolerance, its ferocious selfishness, greediness, and cruelty into
modern civilization under the mask of cant and meek Christianity. When were the
Pagan Cæsars more bloodthirsty or more coolly cruel than are the modern
Potentates and their armies? When did the

millions of the Proletariat starve as they do now?
When has mankind shed more tears and suffered than at present?

Yes; there was a day when the Church and Masonry
were one. These were centuries of intense moral reaction, a transitional period
of thought as heavy as a nightmare, an age of strife. Thus, when the creation
of new ideals led to the apparent pulling down of the old fanes and the
destruction of old idols, it ended in reality with the rebuilding of those
temples out of the old materials,

and the
erection of the same idols under new names. It was a universal rearrangement and
whitewashing—but only skin deep. History will never be able to tell us—but
tradition and judicious research do—how many semi-Hierophants and even high
Initiates were forced to become renegades in order to ensure the

survival of the
secrets of Initiation. Prætextatus, pro-consul at Achaia, is credited with
remarking in the IVth century of our era, that “to deprive the

Greeks of the
sacred mysteries which bind together the whole mankind was equivalent to
depriving them of their life.” The Initiates took perhaps the

hint, and thus
joining nolens volens the followers of the new faith, then becoming all
domineering, acted accordingly. Some hellenized Jewish Gnostics did the same;
and thus more than one “Clemens Alexandrinus”—a convert to all appearance, an
ardent Neo-Platonist and the same philosophical pagan at heart—became the
instructor of ignorant Christian Bishops. In short the convert malgré lui
blended the two external mythologies, the old and the new, and while giving out
the compound to the masses, kept the sacred truths for himself.

The kind of Christians they made may be inferred
from the example of Synesius, the Neo-Platonist. What scholar is ignorant of
the fact, or would presume to deny, that the favourite and devoted pupil of
Hypatia—the virgin-philosopher,

the martyr and victim of the infamous Cyril of
Alexandria—had not even been baptised when first offered by the bishops of
Egypt the Episcopalian See of the Ptolemaïd? Every student is aware that, when
finally baptised, after having accepted the office proffered, it was so
skin-deep that he actually signed his consent only after his conditions had
been complied with and his future

privileges guaranteed.

What the chief clause was, is curious. It was a
sine quâ non condition that he was to be allowed to abstain from professing the
(Christian) doctrines, that he, the new Bishop, did not believe in! Thus,
although baptised and ordained in the degrees of deaconship, priesthood, and
episcopate, he never separated himself from his wife, never gave up his
Platonic philosophy, nor even his sport so strictly forbidden to every other
bishop. This occurred as late as the Vth century.

Such transactions between initiated philosophers
and ignorant priests of reformed Judaism were numerous in those days. The
former sought to save their “mystery-vows” and personal dignity, and to do so
they had to resort to a much-to-be-regretted compromise with ambition,
ignorance, and the rising wave of popular fanaticism. They believed in Divine
Unity, the ONE or Solus, unconditioned and unknowable; and still they consented
to render public homage and pay reverence to Sol, the Sun moving among his
twelve apostles, the I2 signs of the Zodiac, alias the 12 Sons of Jacob. The
hoi polloi remaining ignorant of the former, worshipped the latter, and in
them, their old time-honoured gods. To transfer that worship from the
solar-lunar and other cosmic deities to the Thrones, Archangels, Dominions, and
Saints was no difficult matter; the more so since the said sidereal dignities were
received into the new Christian Canon with their old names almost unchanged.
Thus, while, during Mass, the “Grand Elect” reiterated, under his breath, his
absolute adherence to the Supreme Universal Unity of the “incomprehensible
Workman,” and pronounced in solemn and loud tones the “Sacred Word” (now
substituted by the Masonic “Word at low breath”), his assistant proceeded with
the chanting of the Kyriel of names of those inferior sidereal beings whom the
masses were made to worship.

To the profane catechumen, indeed, who had offered
prayers but a few months or weeks before to the Bull Apis and the holy
Cynocephalus, to the sacred ibis and the hawk-headed Osiris, St. John’s eagle4
and the divine Dove (witness of the

Baptism while hovering over the Lamb of God), must
have appeared as the most natural development and sequence to his own national
and sacred zoology, which he had been taught to worship since the day of his
birth.

IV

It may thus be shown that both modern Freemasonry
and Church ritualism descend in direct line from initiated Gnostics,
Neo-Platonists, and renegade Hierophants of the Pagan Mysteries, the secrets of
which they have lost, but which have been nevertheless preserved by those who
would not compromise. If both Church and Masons are willing to forget the
history of their true origin, the theosophists are not. They repeat: Masonry
and the three great Christian religions are all inherited goods. The
“ceremonies and passwords” of the former, and the prayers, dogmas, and rites of
the latter, are travestied copies of pure Paganism (copied and borrowed as
diligently by the Jews), and of Neo-Platonic Theosophy. Also, that the
“passwords” used even now by Biblical Masons and connected with “the tribe of
Judah,” “Tubal-Cain,” and other Zodiacal dignitaries of the Old Testament, are
the Jewish aliases of the ancient gods of the heathen mobs, not of the gods of
the Hierogrammatists, the interpreters of the true mysteries.

That which follows proves it well. The good Masonic
Brethren could hardly deny that in name they are Solicoles indeed, the
worshippers of the Sun in heaven, in whom the erudite Ragon saw such a
magnificent symbol of the G.A.O.T.U.—which it surely is. Only the trouble he had
was to prove—which no one can—that the said G. A. O. T. U. was not rather the
Sol of the small exoteric fry of the Pro-fanes than the Solus of the High
Epoptai. For the secret of the fires of SOLUS, the spirit of which radiates in
the “Blazing Star,” is a Hermetic secret which, unless a Mason studies true Theosophy, is lost to him
for ever. He has ceased to understand now, even the little indiscretions of
Tshuddi. To this day Masons and Christians keep the Sabbath sacred, and call it
the “Lord’s” day; yet they know as well as any that both Sunday, and the
Sonntag of Protestant England and Germany, mean the Sun-day or the day of the
Sun, as it meant 2,000 years ago.

And you, Reverend and good Fathers, Priests,
Clergymen, and Bishops, you who so charitably call Theosophy “idolatry” and
doom its adherents openly and privately to eternal perdition, can you boast of
one single rite, vestment, or sacred vessel in church or temple that does not
come to you from paganism? Nay, to assert it would be too

dangerous, in view, not only of history, but also
of the confessions of your own priestly craft.

Let us recapitulate if only to justify our
assertions.

“Roman sacrificators had to confess before
sacrificing,” writes du Choul. The priests of Jupiter donned a tall, square,
black cap (Vide Armenian and Greek modern priests), the head dress of the
Flamines. The black soutane of the

Roman
Catholic priest is the black hierocoraces, the loose robe of the Mithraic
priests, so-called from being raven coloured (raven, corax).

The
King-Priest of Babylon had a golden seal-ring and slippers kissed by the
conquered potentates, a white mantle, a tiara of gold, to which two bandelets
were suspended. The popes have the seal-ring and the slippers for the same use;
a white satin mantle bordered with golden stars, a tiara with two bejewelled
bandelets suspended to it, etc., etc. The white linen alb (alba vestis) is the
garment of the priests of Isis: the top of the heads of the priests of Anubis
was shaven (Juvenal), hence the tonsure; the chasuble of the Christian “Father”
is the copy from the upper garment of the Phoenician priest-sacrificers, a
garment called calasiris, tied at the neck and descending to their heels. The
stole comes to our priests from the female garment worn by the Galli, the
male—Nautches of the temple, whose office was that of the Jewish Kadashim;
(Vide II Kings 23:7, for the true word) their belt of purity (?) from the ephod
of the Jews, and the Isiac cord; the priests of Isis being vowed to chastity.
(Vide Ragon, for details. )

The ancient
pagans used holy water or lustrations to purify their cities, fields, temples,
and men, just as it is being done now in Roman Catholic

countries.
Fonts stood at the door of every temple, full of lustral water and called
favisses and aquiminaria. Before sacrificing, the pontiff or the curion (whence
the French curé), dipping a laurel branch into the lustral water, sprinkled
with it the pious congregation assembled, and that which was then termed
lustrica and aspergilium is now called sprinkler (or goupillon, in French). The
latter was with the priestesses of Mithra the symbol of the

Universal lingam. Dipped during the Mysteries in
lustral milk, the faithful were sprinkled with it. It was the emblem of
Universal fecundity; hence the use of the holy water in Christianity, a rite of
phallic origin. More than this; the idea underlying it is purely occult and
belongs to ceremonial magic. Lustrations were performed by fire, sulphur, air,
and water. To draw the attention of the celestial gods, ablutions were resorted
to; to conjure the nether gods away, aspersion was used.

The vaulted ceilings of cathedrals and churches,
Greek or Latin, are often painted blue and studded with golden stars, to
represent the canopy of the

heavens. This is copied from the Egyptian temples,
where solar and star worship was performed. Again, the same reverence is paid
in Christian and Masonic architecture to the Orient (or the Eastern point) as
in the days of Paganism.

Ragon described it fully in his destroyed volumes.
The princeps porta, the door of the World, and of the “King of Glory,” by whom
was meant at first the Sun, and now his human symbol, the Christ, is the door
of the Orient, and faces the East in every church and temple. It is through
this “door of life”—the solemn pathway, through which the daily entrance of the
luminary into the oblong

square6 of the
earth or the Tabernacle of the Sun is effected every morning—that the “newly
born” babe is ushered, and carried to the baptismal

font; and it is
to the left of this edifice (the gloomy north whither start the “apprentices,”
and where the candidates got their trial by water) that now the fonts, and in
the days of old the well (piscinas) of lustral waters, were placed in the
ancient churches, which had been pagan fanes. The altars of heathen Lutetia
were buried, and found again under the choir of Notre-Dame of Paris, its

ancient lustral wells existing to this day in the
said Church. Almost every great ancient Church on the Continent that antedates
the Middle Ages was once a pagan temple in virtue of the orders issued by the
Bishops and Popes of Rome. Gregory the Great (Platine en sa Vie) commands the
monk Augustine, his missionary in England, in this wise: “Destroy the idols,
never the temples!

Sprinkle them with holy water, place in them
relics, and let the nations worship in the places they are accustomed to.” We have
but to turn to the works of Cardinal Baronius, to find in the year XXXVIth of
his Annals his confession.

The Holy Church, he says, was permitted to
appropriate the rites and ceremonies used by the pagans in their idolatrous
cult, since she (the Church) expiated them by her consecration! In the
Antiquités Gaulises (Book II, Ch. 19) by Fauchet, we read that the Bishops of
France adopted and used the pagan ceremonies in order to convert followers to
Christ.

This was when Gaul was still a pagan country. Are
the same rites and ceremonies used now in Christian France, and other Roman
Catholic countries, still going on in grateful remembrance of the pagans and
their gods?

V

Up to the IVth century the churches knew of no
altars. Up to that date the altar was a table raised in the middle of the
temple, for purposes of Communion, or fraternal repasts (the Cœna, as mass was
originally said in the evening). In the

same way now the table is raised in the “Lodge” for
Masonic Banquets, which usually close the proceedings of a Lodge and at which
the resurrected Hiram Abifs, the “Widow’s Sons,” honour their toasts by firing,
a Masonic mode of transubstantiation. Shall we call their banquet tables
altars, also? Why not?

The altars were copies from the ara maxima of pagan
Rome. The Latins placed square and oblong stones near their tombs, and called
them ara, altar; they were consecrated to the gods Lares and Manes. Our altars
are a derivation from these

square stones,
another form of the boundary stones known as the gods Termini—the Hermeses, and
the Mercuries, whence Mercurius quadratus,

quadriceps,
quadrifrons, etc., etc., the four-faced gods, whose symbols these square stones
were, from the highest antiquity. The stone on which the ancient kings of Ireland
were crowned was such an “altar.” Such a stone is in Westminster Abbey,
endowed, moreover, with a voice. Thus our altars and thrones descend directly
from the priapic boundary stones of the pagans—the gods termini.

Shall the church-going reader feel very indignant
if he is told that the Christians adopted the pagan way of worshipping in a
temple, only during the

reign of Diocletianus? Up to that period they had
an insurmountable horror for altars and temples, and held them in abomination
for the first 250 years of our era. These primitive Christians were Christians
indeed; the moderns are more pagan than any ancient idolators. The former were
the Theosophists of those days; from IVth century they became Helleno-Judaic
Gentiles minus the philosophy of the Neo-Platonists. Read what Minutius Pelix
says in the IIIrd century to the Romans:--

You fancy that we (Christians) conceal that which
we worship because we will have neither temples nor altars? But what image of
God shall we raise, since Man is himself God’s image? What temple can we build
to the Deity, when the Universe, which is Its work, can hardly contain It? How
shall we enthrone the power of such Omnipotence in a single building? Is it not
far better to consecrate to the Deity a temple in our heart and spirit?

But then the Chrestians of the type of Minutius
Felix had in their mind the commandment of the MASTER-INITIATE, not to pray in
the synagogues and temples as the hypocrites do, “that they may be seen of
men.” ( Matthew 6:5. )

They remembered the declarations of Paul, the
Apostle-Initiate, the “Master Builder” (I Corinthians 3:10), that MAN was the
one temple of God, in which the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of God, dwelleth.
(Ibid.) They obeyed the truly Christian

precepts, whereas the modern Christians obey but
the arbitrary canons of their respective churches, and the rules of their
Elders. “Theosophists are notorious Atheists,” exclaims a writer in the “Church
Chronicle.” “Not one of them is ever

known to attend
divine service . . . the Church is obnoxious to them”; and forthwith uncorking
the vials of his wrath, he pours out their contents on the infidel, heathen
F.T.S. The modern Churchman stones the Theosophist as his ancient forefather,
the Pharisee of the “Synagogue of the Libertines” (Acts 6:9) stoned Stephen,
for saying that which even many Christian Theosophists say, namely that “the
Most High dwelleth not intemples made with hands” (Ibid. 48); and they “suborn
men” just as these iniquitous judges did (Ibid. II) to testify against us.Forsooth,
friends, you are indeed the righteous descendants of your predecessors, whether
of the colleagues of Saul, or of those of Pope Leo X, the cynical author of the
ever famous sentence: “How useful to us this fable of Christ,” “Quantum nobis
prodest hac fabula Christi!”

VI

The “Solar Myth” theory has become in our day
stale—ad nauseam—repeated as we hear it from the four cardinal points of
Orientalism and Symbolism, and applied indiscriminately to all things and all
religions, except Church Christianity and state-religion. No doubt the Sun was
throughout the whole antiquity and since days immemorial the symbol of the
Creative Deity—with every nation, not with the Parsis alone; but so he is with
the Ritualists. As in days of old, so it is

now. Our central star is the “Father” for the
pro-fanes, the Son of the ever unknowable Deity for the Epoptai. Says the same
Mason, Ragon, “the Sun was the most sublime and natural image of the GREAT
ARCHITECT, as the most ingenious of all the allegories under which the moral
and good man (the true sage) had ever endowed infinite and limitless
Intelligence.” Apart from the latter assumption, Ragon is right; for he shows
this symbol gradually receding from the ideal so represented and conceived, and
becoming finally from a symbol the original, in the minds of his ignorant
worshippers. Then the great Masonic author proves that it is the physical Sun
which was regarded as both the Father and the Son by the early Christians.

“Oh, initiated Brethren,” he exclaims. “Can you
forget that in the temples of the existing religion a large lamp burns night
and day? It is suspended in

front
of the chief altar, the depository of the ark of the Sun. Another lamp burning
before the altar of the virgin-mother is the emblem of the light of

the moon. Clemens Alexandrinus tells us that the
Egyptians were the first to establish the religious use of the lamps. . . . Who
does not know that the most sacred and terrible duty was entrusted to the
Vestals? If the Masonic temples are lighted with three astral lights, the sun,
the moon. and Episcopes (Wardens, in French Surveillants), it is because one of
the Fathers of Masonry, the learned Pythagoras, ingenuously suggests that we
should not speak of divine things without a light. Pagans celebrated a festival
of lamps called Lampadophorics in honour of Minerva, Prometheus, and Vulcan.
But Lactantius

and some of the earliest fathers of the new faith
complained bitterly of this pagan introduction of lamps in the Churches; ‘If
they deigned,’ writes Lactantius, ‘to contemplate that light which we call the
SUN, they would soon recognise that God has no need of their lamps.’ And
Vigilantius adds: ‘Under the pretext of religion the Church established a
Gentile custom of lighting vile candles. while the SUN is there illuminating us
with a thousand lights. Is it not a great honour for the LAMB OF GOD (the sun
thus represented), which placed in the middle of the throne (the Universe)
fills it with the radiance of his Majesty?’ Such passages prove to us that in
those days the primitive Church worshipped THE GREAT ARCHITECT OF THE WORLD in
its image the SUN, sole of its kind.” (The Mass and its Mysteries, pp. 19 and
20.)

Indeed, while Christian candidates have to
pronounce the Masonic oath turned to the East and that their “Venerable” keeps
in the Eastern corner, because the Neophytes were made to do the same during
the Pagan Mysteries, the Church has, in her turn, preserved the identical rite.
During the High Mass, the High-Altar (ara maxima) is ornamented with the
Tabernacle, or the pyx (the box in which the Host is kept), and with six
lighted tapers. The esoteric meaning of the pyx and contents—the symbol of the
Christ-Sun—is that it represents the resplendent luminary, and the six tapers
the six planets (the early Christians knowing of no more), three on his right
and three on his left. This is a copy of the seven branched candlestick of the
synagogue, which has an identical meaning. “Sol est Dominus Meus” “the Sun is
my Lord!” exclaims David in Psalm 95, translated very ingeniously in the
authorized version by “The Lord is a great God,” “a great King above all Gods”
(v. 3), or planets truly! Augustin Chalis is more sincere in Philosophie des
Religions Compareés (Vol. II, p. 18), when writes:

All are devs (demons), on this Earth, save the God
of the Seers (Initiates) the sublime IAO; and if in Christ you see aught than
the SUN, then you adore a dev, a phantom such as are all the children of night.

The East being the
cardinal point whence arises the luminary of the Day, the great giver and
sustainer of life, the creator of al that lives and breathes on

this globe,
what wonder if all the nation of the Earth worshipped in him the visible agent
of the invisible Principle and Cause; and that mass should be said in the
honour of him who is the giver of messis or “harvest.” But, between worshipping
the ideal as a whole, and the physical symbol, a part chosen to represent that
whole and the ALL, there is an abyss. For the learned Egyptian, the Sun was the
“eye” of Osiris, not Osiris him self; the same for the learned Zoroastrians.
For the early Christians the Sun became the Deity, in toto; and by dint of
casuistics, sophistry, and dogmas not to be questioned, the modern Christian
churches have contrived to force even the educated world to accept the same,
while hypnotising it into a belief that their god is the one living true Deity,
the maker of, not the Sun—a demon worshipped by the “heathen.” But what may be
the difference between a wicked demon, and the anthropomorphic God, e.g., as
represented in Solomon’s Proverbs? That “God,” unless poor, helpless, ignorant
men call upon him, when their “fear cometh as desolation” and their
“destruction as a whirlwind,” threatens them in such words as these “I will
laugh at your calamities, I will mock when your fear cometh!” (Prov. 1:27.)
Identify this God with the great Avatar on whom the Christian legend is hung;
make him one with that true Initiate who said, “Blessed are they that mourn;
for they shall be comforted”: and what is the result? Such identification alone
quite sufficient to justify the fiendish joy of Tertullian, who laughed and
rejoiced at the idea of his infidel next of kin roasting in hell-fire the
advice of Hieronymus to the Christian convert to trample over the body of his
pagan mother, if she seeks to prevent him leaving her for ever to follow
Christ; and it makes of all the Church tyrants, murderers, and omnes gentes of
the Inquisition, the grandest and noblest exemplars of practical Christianity
that have ever lived!

VII

The ritualism of primitive Christianity—as now
sufficiently shown—sprang from ancient Masonry. The latter was, in its turn,
the offspring of the, then, almost dead Mysteries. Of these we have now a few
words to say.

It is well known that throughout antiquity, besides
the popular worship composed of the dead-letter forms and empty exoteric
ceremonies, every nation had its secret cult known to the world as the
MYSTERIES. Strabo, one among many others, warrants for this assertion. (Vide
Georg, lib. 10.) No one received admittance into them save those prepared for
it by special training. The neophytes instructed in the upper temples were
initiated into the final Mysteries in the crypts. These instructions were the
last surviving heirlooms of archaic wisdom, and it is under the guidance of
high Initiates that they were enacted. We use the word “enacted” purposely; for
the oral instructions at low breath were given only in the crypts, in solemn
silence and secrecy. During the public classes and general teachings, the
lessons in cosmogony and theogony were delivered in allegorical representation,
the modus operandi of the gradual evolution of Kosmos, worlds, and finally of
our earth, of gods and men, all was imparted in a

symbolical way. The great public performances
during the festivals of the Mysteries, were witnessed by the masses and the
personified truths worshipped by the multitudes—blindly. Alone the high
Initiates, the Epoptœ, understood their language and real meaning. All this,
and so far, is well known to the world of scholars.

It was a common claim of all the ancient nations
that the real mysteries of what is called so unphilosophically, creation, were
divulged to the elect of our (fifth) race by its first dynasties of divine
Rulers—gods in flesh, “divine

incarnations,” or Avatars, so called. The last
Stanzas, given from the Book of Dzyan in The Secret Doctrine (Vol. II, p. 21 ),
speak of those who ruled over the descendants “produced from the holy stock,”
and . . . “who re-descended, who made peace with the fifth (race) who taught
and instructed it.”

The phrase “made peace” shows that there had been a
previous quarrel. The fate of the Atlanteans in our philosophy, and that of the
prediluvians in the Bible, corroborates the idea. Once more—many centuries
before the Ptolemies—the same abuse of the sacred knowledge crept in amongst
the initiates of the Sanctuary in Egypt. Preserved for countless ages in all
their purity, the sacred teachings of the gods, owing to personal ambition and
selfishness, became corrupted again.

The meaning of the symbols found itself but too
often desecrated by unseemly interpretations, and very soon the Eleusinian
Mysteries remained the only ones pure from adulteration and sacrilegious
innovations. These were in honour of (Ceres) Demeter, or Nature, and were
celebrated in Athens, the flowers of the intellect of Asia Minor and Greece
being initiated thereinto. In his 4th Book, Zosimus states that
these Initiates embraced the whole of mankind;7 while Aristides calls the
Mysteries the common temple of the earth.

It is to preserve some reminiscence of this
“temple,” and to rebuild it, if need be, that certain elect ones among the
initiated began to be set apart. This was done by their High Hierophants in
every century, from the time when the sacred

allegories
showed the first signs of desecration and decay. For the great Elusinia finally
shared the same fate as the others. Their earlier excellency

and purpose are
described by Clement of Alexandria who shows the greater Mysteries divulging
the secrets and the mode of construction of the Universe, this being the
beginning, the end and the ultimate goal of human knowledge, for

in them was shown to the initiated Nature and all
things as they are. (Strom. 8.) This is the Pythagorean Gnosis,Epictetus speaks of these instructions in the
highest terms: “All that is ordained therein was established by our masters

for the instruction of men and the correction of
our customs.” (Apud Arrian.Dissert.
lib. cap. 21.) Plato asserts in the Phaedo the same: the object of the
Mysteries was to re-establish the soul in its primordial purity, or that state
of perfection from which it had fallen.

VIII

But there came a day when the Mysteries deviated
from their purity in the same way as the exoteric religions. This began when
the State bethought itself, on the advice of Aristogeiton (510 B.C.), of
drawing from the Eleusinia a constant and prolific source of income. A law was
passed to that effect.

Henceforth, no one could be initiated without
paying a certain sum of money for the privilege.

That boon which could hitherto be acquired only at
the price of incessant, almost superhuman effort, toward virtue and excellency,
was now to be purchased for so much gold. Laymen—and even priests
themselves—while accepting the desecration lost eventually their past reverence
for the inner Mysteries, and this led to further profanation of the Sacred
Science. The rent made in the veil widened with every century; and more than
ever the Supreme Hierophants, dreading the final publication and distortion of
the most holy secrets of nature, laboured to eliminate them from the inner
programme, limiting the full knowledge thereof but to the few. It is those set apart
who soon became the only custodians of the divine heirloom of the ages. Seven
centuries later, we find Apuleius, his sincere inclination toward magic and the
mystical notwithstanding, writing in his Golden Ass a bitter satire against the
hypocrisy and debauchery of certain orders of half-initiated priests. It is
through him also, that we learn that in his day (IInd century A.D.) the
Mysteries had become so universal that persons of all ranks and conditions, in
every country, men, women, and children all were initiated! Initiation had
become as necessary in his day as baptism has since become with the Christians;
and, as the latter is now, so the former had become then—i.e., meaningless, and
a purely dead-letter ceremony of mere form. Still later, the fanatics of the
new religion laid their heavy hand on the Mysteries.

The Epoptæ, they “who see things as they are”
disappeared one by one, emigrating into regions inaccessible to the Christians.
The Mystæ (from Mystes “or veiled”) “they who see things only as they appear”
remained very soon, alone, sole masters of the situation.

It is the former, the “set apart,” who have
preserved the true secrets; it is the Mystæ, those who knew them only superficially,
who laid the first foundation stone of modern masonry; and it is. from this
half pagan, half converted primitive fraternity of Masons that Christian
ritualism and most of dogmas were born. Both the Epoptæ and the Mystæ are
entitled to the name of Masons: for both carrying out their pledges to, and the
injunction of their long departed Hierophants and“Kings” rebuilt, the Epoptæ, their “lower,”
and the Mystæ, their “upper temples.

For such were the irrespective appellations in
antiquity, and are so to this day in certain regions. Sophocles speaks in the
Electra (Act 2) of the foundations of Athens—the site of the Eleusinian
Mysteries—as being the “sacred edifice of the gods,” i.e. built by the gods.
Initiation was spoken of as “walking into the temple,” and “cleaning,” or
rebuilding the temple referred to the body of an initiate on his last and
supreme trial. (Vide St. John’s Gospel, 2:19). The esoteric doctrine, also, was
sometimes called by the name of “Temple” and popular exoteric religion, by that
of “city.” To build a temple meant to found an esoteric school; to “build a
city temple” signified to establish a public cult. Therefore, the true
surviving “Masons” of the lower Temple, or the crypt, the sacred place of
initiation, are the only custodians of the true Masonic secrets now lost to the
world. We yield willingly to the modern Fraternity of Masons the title of
“Builders of the higher Temple,” as the à priori superiority of the comparative
adjective is as illusionary as the blaze of the burning bush of Moses itself in
the Templar’s Lodges.

IX

The misunderstood allegory known as the Descent
into Hades, has wrought infinite mischief. The exoteric “fable” of Hercules and
Theseus descending into the infernal regions; the journey thither of Orpheus,
who found his way by the power of his lyre (Ovid Metam.); of Krishna, and
finally of Christ, who “descended into Hell and the third day rose again from
the dead”—was twisted out of recognition by the non-initiated adapters of pagan
rites and transformers thereof, into Church rites and dogmas.

Astronomically, this descent into hell symbolized
the Sun during the autumnal equinox when abandoning the higher sidereal
regions—there was a supposed fight between him and the Demon of Darkness who
got the best of our luminary.

Then the Sun was imagined to undergo a temporary
death and to descend into the infernal regions. But mystically, it typified the
initiatory rites in the crypts of the temple, called the Underworld. Bacchus,
Herakles, Orpheus, Asklepios and all the other visitors of the crypt, all
descended into hell and ascended thence on the third day, for all were
initiates and “Builders of the lower Temple.” The words addressed by Hermes to
Prometheus, chained on the arid rocks of the Caucasus—i. e., bound by ignorance
to his physical body and devoured therefore by the vultures of passion—apply to
every neophyte, to every Chrestos on trial. “To such labours look thou for no
termination until the (or a) god shall appear as a substitute in thy pangs and shall
be willing to go both to gloomy Hades and to the murky depths around Tartarus.”
(Æschylus: Prometheus, 1027, ff.) They mean simply that until Prometheus (or
man) could find the “God,” or Hierophant (the Initiator) who would willingly
descend into the crypts of initiation, and walk around Tartarus with him, the
vulture of passion would never cease to gnaw his vitals.8 Æschylus as a pledged
Initiate could say no more; but Aristophanes less pious, or more daring,
divulges the secret to those who are not blinded by a too strong preconception,
in his immortal satire on Heracles’ descent into Hell. (Frogs.) There we find
the chorus of the “blessed ones” (the initiated), the Elysian Fields, the
arrival of Bacchus (the god Hierophant) with Herakles, the reception with
lighted torches, emblems of new LIFE and RESURRECTION from the darkness of
human ignorance to the light of spiritual knowledge—eternal LIFE.

Every word of the brilliant satire shows the inner
meaning of the poet:

Wake, burning torches .. . for thou comest

Shaking them in thy hand, Iacche, Phosphoric star
of the nightly rite.All such final initiations took place during the night. To
speak, therefore, of anyone as having descended into Hades, was equivalent in
antiquity to calling him a full Initiate. To those who feel inclined to reject
this explanation, I would offer a query. Let them explain, in that case, the
meaning of a sentence

in the sixth book of Virgil’s Æneid. What can the
poet mean, if not that which is asserted above, when introducing the aged
Anchises in the Elysian fields, he makes him advise Æneas his son, to travel to
Italy . . . where he would have to

fight in Latium, a rude and barbarous people;
therefore, he adds, before you venture there “Descend into Hades,” i. e. get
yourself initiated.

The benevolent clericals, who are so apt to send us
on the slightest provocation to Tartarus and the infernal regions, do not
suspect what good wishes for us the threat contains; and what a holy character
one must be before one gets into such

a sanctified place.

It is not pagans alone who had their Mysteries.
Bellarmin (De Eccl. Triumph. lib. 2, cap. 14) states that the early Christians
adopted, after the example of pagan ceremonies, the custom of assembling in the
church during the nights preceding their festivals, to hold vigils or “wakes.”
Their ceremonies were performed at first with the most edifying holiness and
purity. But very shortly after that, such immoral abuses crept into these
“assemblies” that the bishops found it necessary to abolish them. We have read
in dozens of works about the licentiousness in the pagan religious festivals.
Cicero is quoted (de Leg. lib. 2, cap. 15) showing Diagondas, the Theban,
finding no other means of remedying such disorders in the ceremonies than the suppression
of the Mysteries themselves. When we contrast the two kinds of celebrations,
however, the Pagan Mysteries hoary with age centuries before our era, and the
Christian Agapæ and others in a religion hardly born and claiming such a
purifying influence on its converts, we can only pity the mental blindness of
its defenders and quote for their benefit Roscommon, who asks:--

When
you begin with somuch pomp and show, Why is the end so little and so low? Primitive
Christianity—being derived from the primitive Masonry—had its grip. pass-words,
and degrees of initiation. “Masonry” is an old term but it came into use very
late in our era. Paul calls himself a “master-builder” and he was one.

The ancient Masons
called themselves by various names and most of the Alexandrian Eclectics, the
Theosophists of Ammonias Saccas and the later

Neo-Platonists,
were all virtually Masons. They were all bound by oath to secrecy, considered
themselves a Brotherhood, and had also their signs of recognition. The
Eclectics or Philaletheians comprised within their ranks the ablest and most
learned scholars of the day. as also several crowned heads. Says the author of
The Eclectic Philosophy:

Their doctrines were adopted by pagans and
Christians in Asia and Europe, and for a season everything seemed favourable
for a general fusion of religious belief. The Emperors Alexander Severus and
Julian embraced them. Their predominating influence upon religious ideas
excited the jealousy of the Christians of Alexandria. The school was removed to
Athens, and finally closed by the Emperor Justinian. Its professors withdrew to
Persia,9 where they made many disciples.

A few more details may prove perchance,
interesting. We know that the Eleusinian Mysteries survived all others. While
the secret cults of the minor gods such as the Curates, the Dactyli, the
worship of Adonis, of the Kabiri, and even those of old Egypt had entirely
disappeared under the revengeful and cruel hand of the pitiless Theodosius,10
the Mysteries of Eleusis could not be so easily disposed of. They were indeed
the religion of mankind, and shone in all their ancient splendour if not in
their primitive purity. It took several centuries to abolish them, and they
could not be entirely suppressed before the year 396 of our era.

It is then that the “Builders of the higher, or
City Temple” appeared first on the scene and worked unrelentingly to infuse
their rituals and peculiar dogmas into the nascent and ever fighting and quarrelling
church. The triple Sanctus of

the Roman Catholic Mass is the triple S... S...
S... of these early Masons, and is the modern prefix to their documents or “any
written balustre—the initial of Salutem, or Health” as cunningly put by a
Mason. “This triple masonic salutation is the most ancient among their
greetings.” (Ragon.)

XI

But they did not limit their grafts on the tree of
the Christian religion to this alone. During the Mysteries of Eleusis, wine
represented Bacchus and

Ceres—wine and bread, or corn.11 Now Ceresor
Demeter was the female productive principle of the Earth; the spouse of Father
Æther, or Zeus; and Bacchus, the son of Zeus-Jupiter, was his father
manifested: in other words, Ceres and Bacchus were the personifications of
Substance and Spirit, the two vivifying principles in Nature and on Earth. The
hierophant Initiator presented symbolically, before the final revelation of the
mysteries, wine and bread to the candidate, who ate and drank, in token that
the spirit was to quicken matter: i.e. the divine wisdom of the Higher-Self was
to enter into and take possession of his inner Self or Soul through what was to
be revealed to him.

This rite was adopted by the Christian Church. The
Hierophant who was called the “Father,” has now passed, part and parcel—minus
knowledge—into the “Father” priest, who to-day administers the same communion.
Jesus calls himself a vine and his “Father” the husbandman; and his injunction
at the Last Supper shows his thorough knowledge of the symbolical meaning (Vide
infra, note) of bread and wine, and his identification with the logoi of the
ancients. “Whose eateth my

flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life.”
“This is a hard saying,” he adds. . . . “The words (rhemata, or arcane
utterances) that I speak unto you, they are Spirit and they are Life.” They
are; because “it is the Spirit that quickeneth.” Furthermore these rhemata of
Jesus are indeed the arcane utterances of an Initiate.

But between this noble rite, as old as symbolism,
and its later anthropomorphic interpretation, now known as transubstantiation,
there is an abyss of

ecclesiastical sophistry. With what force the
exclamation—“Woe unto you lawyers. For ye have taken away the key of
knowledge,” (and will not permit even now gnosis to be given to others); with
what tenfold force, I say, it applies more now than then. Aye; that gnosis, “ye
entered not in yourselves, and them that were (and are) entering ye prevented,”
and still prevent. Nor has the

modern priesthood alone laid itself open to this
blame. Masons, the descendants, or at any rate the successors, of the “Builders
of the upper Temple” during the Mysteries, they who ought to know better, will
pooh-pooh and scorn any one among their own brethren who will remind them of
their true origin. Several great modern Scholars and Kabalists, who are Masons,
and could be named, received worse than the cold shoulder from their Brethren.
It is ever the same old, old story. Even Ragon, the most . learned in his day
among all the Masons of our century, complains of it, in these words:--

All the ancient narratives attest that the
initiations in the days of old had an imposing ceremonial, and became memorable
for ever through the grand truths divulged and the knowledge that resulted
therefrom. And yet there are some modern Masons, of half-learning, who hasten
to treat as charlatans all those who successfully remind of, and explain to
them these ancient ceremonies!(Cours.
Philos. p. 87 note [2].)

XII

Vanitas vanitatum! nothing is new under the sun.
The “Litanies of the Virgin Mary” prove it in the sincerest way. Pope Gregory
I, introduces the worship of the Virgin Mary and the Chalcedonian Council
proclaim her the mother of God. But the author of the Litanies had not even the
decency (or is it the brains?) to furnish her with any other than pagan
adjectives and titles, as I shall presently show. Not a symbol, not a metaphor
of this famous Litany but belonged to a crowd of goddesses; all Queens,
Virgins, or Mothers; these three titles applying to Isis, Rhea, Cybele, Diana,
Lucifera, Lucina, Luna, Tellus, Latona triformis, Proserpina, Hecate, Juno,
Vesta, Ceres, Leucothea, Astarte, celestial Venus and Urania, Alma Venus, etc.,
etc., etc.

Besides the primitive signification of trinity (the
esoteric, or that Father, Mother, Son) does not this Western trimurti (three
faces) mean in the masonic

pantheon: “Sun, Moon, and the Venerable”? a slight
alteration, forsooth, from the Germanic and Northern Fire, Sun and Moon.

It is the intimate knowledge of this, perchance,
that made the Mason, J. M. Ragon describe his profession of faith thus:

For me the Son is the same as Horus, son of Osiris
and Isis; he is the SUN who, every year redeems the world from sterility and
the universal death of the races.

De Maleville, a great Hebrew scholar and translator
of Rabbinical literature, observes that the Jews give to the moon all those
names which, in the Litanies, are used to glorify the Virgin. He finds in the
Litanies of Jesus all the attributes of Osiris—the Eternal Sun, and of Horus,
the Annual Sun.And he proves it.Mater
Christi is the mother of the Redeemer of the old Masons, who is the Sun.

The hoi polloi among the Egyptians, claimed that
the child, symbol of the great central star, Horus, was the Son of Osireth and
Oseth, whose souls had ensouled, after their death, the Sun and the Moon. Isis
became, with the Phœnicians, Astarte, the names under which they adored the
Moon, personified as a woman adorned with horns, which symbolised the crescent.
Astarte was represented at the autumnal equinox after her husband (the Sun’s)
defeat by the Prince of Darkness, and descent into Hades, as weeping over the
loss of her consort, who is also her son, as Isis does that of her consort,
brother and son (Osiris-Horus). Astarte holds in her hand a cruciform stick, a
regular cross, and stands weeping on the crescent moon.

The Christian Virgin Mary is often represented in
the same way, standing on the new moon, surrounded by stars and weeping for her
son juxta crucem lacrymosa dum pendebat (Vide Stabat Mater Dolorosa). Is not
she the heiress of Isis and Astarte? asks the author.

Truly, and you have but to repeat the Litany to the
Virgin of the R. Catholic Church, to find yourself repeating ancient
incantations to Adonaïa (Venus), the mother of Adonis, the Solar god of so many
nations; to Mylitta (the Assyrian Venus), goddess of nature; to Alilat, whom
the Arabs symbolized by the two lunar horns; to Selene, wife and sister of
Helion, the Sun god of the Greeks; or, to the Magna Mater, . . . honestissima,
purissima, castissima, the Universal Mother of all Beings—because SHE IS MOTHER
NATURE.

Verily is Maria (Mary) the Isis Myrionymos, the
Goddess Mother of the ten thousand names! As the Sun was Phœbus, in heaven, so
he became Apollo, on earth, and Pluto in the still lower regions (after
sunset); so the moon was Phœbe in heaven, and Diana on earth (Gœa, Latona,
Ceres); becoming Hecate and Proserpine in Hades. Where is the wonder then, if
Mary is called regina virginum, “Queen of Virgins,” and castissima (most
chaste), when even the prayers offered to her at the sixth hour of the morning
and the evening are copied from those sung by the “heathen” Gentiles at the
same hours in honour of Phœbe and Hecate? The verse of the “Litany to the
Virgin,” stella matutina,12 we are informed, is a faithful copy of a verse from
the litany of the triformis of the pagans. It is at the Council which condemned
Nestorius that Mary was first titled as the “Mother of

God,” mater
dei.

In our next, we
shall have something to say about this famous Litany of the Virgin, and show
its origin in full. We shall cull our proofs, as we go along, from the classics
and the moderns, and supplement the whole from the annals of religions as found
in the Esoteric Doctrine. Meanwhile, we may add a few more statements and give
the etymology of the most sacred terms in ecclesiastical ritualism.

XIII

Let us give a few moments of attention to the
assemblies of the “Builders of the upper Temple” in early Christianity. Ragon
has shown plainly to us the origin of the following terms:--

(a) “The word ‘mass,’ comes from the Latin
Messis—‘harvest,’ whence the noun Messias, ‘he who ripens the harvest,’ Christ,
the Sun.” (b) The word “Lodge” used by the Masons, the feeble successors of the
Initiates, has itsroot in loga, (loka, in Sanskrit) a locality and a world;

and in the Greek logos, the Word, a discourse;
signifying in its full meaning “a place where certain things are discussed.”

These assemblies of the logos of the primitive initiated
masons came to be called synaxis, “gatherings” of the Brethren for the purpose
of praying and celebrating the cœna (supper) wherein only bloodless offerings,
fruit and cereals, were used. Soon after these offerings began to be called
hostiœ or sacred and pure hosties, in contrast to the impure sacrifices (as of
prisoners of war, hostes, whence the word hostage). As the offerings consisted
of theharvest fruits,
the first fruits of messis, thence the word “mass.” Since no father of the
Church mentions, as some scholars would have it, that the word mass comes from
the Hebrew missah (oblatum, offering) one explanation is as good as the other.
For an exhaustive enquiry on the word missa and mizda, see King’s Gnostics, pp.
124, et seq.

Now the word synaxis was also called by the Greeks
agyrmos,(a collection of men,
assembly). It referred to initiation into the Mysteries. Both

words—synaxis and agyrmos13--became obsolete with
the Christians, and the word missa, or mass, prevailed and remained. Theologians
will have it, desirous as they are to veil its etymology, that the term messias
(Messiah) is derived from the Latin word missus (messenger, the sent). But if
so, then again it may be applied as well to the Sun, the annual messenger, sent
to bring light and new life to the earth and its products. The Hebrew word for
Messiah mâshiah (anointed, from mashah, to anoint) will hardly apply to, or
bear out the identity in the ecclesiastical sense; nor will the Latin missa (
mass) derive well from that other Latin word mittere, missum, “to send,” or
“dismiss.”

Because the communion service—its heart and soul—is
based on the consecration and oblation of the host or hostia (sacrifice), a
wafer ( a thin, leaf-like bread) representing the body of Christ in the Eucharist,
and that such wafer of flour is a direct development of the harvest or cereal
offerings.

Again, the primitive masses were cœneas (late
dinners or suppers), which, from the simple

meals of Romans, who “ washed, were anointed, and
wore a cenatory garment” at dinner became consecrated meals in memory of the
last Supper of Christ.

The converted Jews in the days of the Apostles met
at their synaxes, to read the Evangels and their correspondence (Epistles). St.
Justin (150 A.D.) tells us that these solemn assemblies were held on the day
called Sun (Sunday, dies magnus), on which days there were psalms chanted
“collation of baptism with pure water and the agapœ of the holy cœna with bread
and wine.” What has this hybrid combination of pagan Roman dinners, raised by
the inventors of church dogmas to a sacred mystery, to do with the Hebrew
Messiah “he who causes to go down into the pit” (or Hades), or its Greek
transliteration Messias. As shown by Nork, Jesus “was never anointed either as
high priest or king,” therefore his name of Messias cannot be derived from its
present Hebrew equivalent. The less so, since the word anointed, or “rubbed
with oil” a Homeric term, is chris,and
chrio,both to anoint the body with oil.
(See LUCIFER for 1887, “The Esoteric Meaning of the Gospels.”)

Another high Mason, the author of “The Source of
Measures,” summarizes this imbroglio of the ages in a few lines by saying:--

The fact is there were two Messiahs: One, as
causing himself to go down into the pit, for the salvation of the world;14 this
was the sun shorn of his golden rays and crowned with blackened ones
(symbolizing this loss) as the thorns. The other, was the triumphant Messiah,
mounted up to this summit of the arch of Heaven, personated as the Lion of the
tribe of Judah. In both instances he had the cross. . . .”

At the Ambarvales, the festivals in honour of
Ceres, the Arval (the assistant of the High Priest) clad in pure white, placing
on the hostia (sacrificial heap) a cake of corn, water and wine, tasted the
wine of libation and gave to all others

to taste. The oblation (or offering) was then taken
up by the High Priest.

It symbolized the three kingdoms of Nature—the cake
of corn (vegetable kingdom), the sacrificial vase or chalice (mineral), and the
pall (the scarf-like garment) of the Hierophant, an end of which he threw over
the oblation wine cup. This pall was made of pure white lamb skins.

The modern priest repeats, gesture for gesture, the
acts of the pagan priest. He lifts up and offers the bread to be consecrated;
blesses the water that is to be put in the chalice, and then pours the wine
into it, incenses the altar, etc., etc., and going to the altar washes his
fingers saying, “I will wash my hands among the INNOCENT and encompass thy
altar, O Lord.” He does so, because the ancient and pagan priest did the same,
saying, “I wash (with lustral water) my hands among the INNOCENT (the fully
initiated Brethren) and encompass thy altar, O great Goddess” (Ceres). Thrice
went the high priest round the altar loaded with offerings, carrying high above
his head the chalice covered with the end of his snow-white lamb-skin. . . .

The consecrated vestment worn by the Pope, the
pall, “has the form of a scarf made of white wool, embroidered with purple
crosses.” In the Greek Church, the priest covers, with the end of the pall
thrown over his shoulder, the chalice.

The High Priest of antiquity repeated thrice during
the divine services his “O redemptor mundi” to Apollo ‘the Sun’ his mater
Salvatoris, to Ceres, the earth, his Virgo paritura to the Virgin Goddess etc.,
and pronounced seven ternary commemorations. (Hearken, O Masons!)

The ternary number, so reverenced in antiquity, is
as reverenced now, and is pronounced five times during the mass. We have three
introibo, three Kyrie eleison, three mea culpa, three agnus dei, three Dominus
Vobiscum. A true masonic series! Let us add to this the three et cum spiritu
tuo, and the Christian mass yields to us the same seven triple commemorations.
PAGANISM, MASONRY, and THEOLOGY—such is the historical trinity now ruling the
world sub rosa. Shall we close with a Masonic greeting and say:--

Illustrious officers of Hiram Abif, Initiates, and
“Widow’s sons.”

The Kingdom of Darkness and ignorance is fast dispelling,
but there . are regions still untouched by the hand of the scholar, and as
black as the night of Egypt.Fratres,
sobrii estote et vigilate!

H.P.B.Lucifer,
March, May, 1889

1 From pro, “before,” and fanum, “the temple,”
i.e., the non-initiates who stood before the fane, but dared not enter
it.--(Vide the Works of Ragon.)

2 The Earth,
and the Moon, its parent, are interchangeable. Thus all the lunar goddesses
were also the representative symbols of the Earth.—Vide The Secret Doctrine,
“Symbolism.”

3 Since the origin of Masonry. the split between
the British and American Masons and the French “Grand Orient” of the “Widow’s
Sons” is the first one that has ever occurred. It bids fair to make of these
two sections of Masonry a Masonic Protestant and a Roman Catholic Church, as
far as regards ritualism and

brotherly love, at all events.

4 It is an
error to say that John the Evangelist became the patron Saint of Masonry only
after the XVIth century, and it implies a double mistake. Between John the
“Divine,” the “Seer” and the writer of Revelation, and John the Evangelist who
is now shown in company of the Eagle, there is a great difference, as the
latter John is a creation of Irenæus, along with the fourth gospel. Both were
the result of the quarrel of the Bishop d Lyons with the Gnostics, and no one
will ever tell what was the real name of the writer of the grandest of the
Evangels.

But what we do
know is, that the Eagle is the legal property of John, the author of the
Apocalypsis, written originally centuries B.C., and only re-edited, before
receiving canonical hospitality. This John, or Oannes, was the accepted patron
of all the Egyptian and Greek Gnostics (who were the early Builders or Masons
of “Solomon’s Temple,” as, earlier, of the Pyramids) from the beginning of
time. The Eagle was his attribute, the most archaic of symbols—being the
Egyptian Ah, the bird of Zeus, and sacred to the Sun with every ancient people.
Even the Jews adopted it among the Initiated Kabalists, as “the symbol of the
Sephirah Tiph-e-reth, the spiritual Æther or air,” says Mr. Myer’s “Qabbalah.”
With the Druids the eagle was the symbol of the Supreme Deity, and again a
portion of the cherubic symbol.

Adopted by the pre-Christian Gnostics, it could be
seen at the foot of the Tau in Egypt, before

it was placed in the Rose-Croix degree at the foot
of the Christian cross. Pre-eminently the bird of the Sun, the Eagle is
necessarily connected with every solar god, and is the symbol of every seer who
looks into the astral light, and sees in it the shadows of the Past, Present,
and Future, as easily as the Eagle looks at the Sun.

5 Except, perhaps, the temples and chapels of
dissident Protestants, which are built anywhere, and used for more than one
purpose. In America I know of chapels hired for fairs and shows, and even
theatres; to-day a chapel, the day after

sold for debts,
and fitted for a gin shop or a public house. I speak of chapels, of course, not
of Churches and Cathedrals.

6 A Masonic term; a symbol of the Arks of Noah, and
of the Covenant, of the Temple of Solomon, the Tabernacle, and the Camp of the
Israelites, all built as “oblong squares.” Mercury and Apollo were represented
by oblong cubes and squares, and so is Kaaba, the great temple at Mecca.

8 The dark
region in the crypt, into which the candidate under initiation was supposed to throw
away for ever his worst passions and lusts. Hence the allegories by Homer,
Ovid, Virgil, etc., all accepted literally by the modern scholar.

Phlegethon was
the river in Tartarus into which the initiate was thrice plunged by the
Hierophant, after which the trials were over and the new man born anew. He had
left in the dark stream the old sinful man for ever, and issued on the third
day, from Tartarus, as an individuality, the personality being dead.

Such characters
as Ixion, Tantalus, Sisyphus, etc., are each a personification of some human
passion.

9And we may add, beyond, to India and Central Asia,
for we find their influence everywhere in Asiatic countries.

10 The murderer of the Thessalonians, who were
butchered by this pious son of the Church.

11 Bacchus is certainly of Indian origin. Pausanias
shows him the first to lead an expedition against India, and the first to throw
a bridge over the Euphrates. “The cable ‘ which served to unite the two
opposite shores being exhibited to this day,” writes this historian, “it being
woven from vine-branches and trainings of ivy.” (X 29. 4.) Arrianus and
Quintus-Curtius explained the allegory of Bacchus’ birth from the thigh of
Zeus, by saying that he was born on the Indian Mount Meru (fromthigh). We are aware that Eratosthenes and
Strabo

believed the Indian Bacchus had been invented by
flatterers to simply please Alexander, believed to have conquered India as
Bacchus is supposed to have done. But on the other hand Cicero mentions the god
as a Son of Thyoné and Nisus; and Dionysus ormeans the god Dis from Mount Nys in India. Bacchus crowned with ivy, or
Kissos is Krishna, one of whose names was Kissen. Dionysus was pre-eminently
the god who was expected to liberate the souls of men from their prisons of
flesh—Hades and the human Tartarus, in one of its symbolical senses.

Cicero calls Orpheus a son of Bacchus, and there is
a tradition which not only makes Orpheus come from India (he being calleddark, of tawny complexion) but identifies him
with Arjuna, the chela and adoptive son of Krishna. (Vide Five

12The “Morning Star,” or Lucifer, the name which Jesus
calls himself in Rev. 22:16, and which becomes, nevertheless, the name of the
Devil, as soon as a theosophical journal assumes it!

13 Hesychius
gives the name (agyrmos) to the first day of the initiation into the mystery of
Ceres, goddess of harvest, and refers to it also under that of Synaxis. The
early Christians called their mass, before this term was adapted, and the
celebration of their mysteries—Synaxis, a word compounded from sun “with,” and
ago “I lead,” whence, the Greek synaxis or an assembly.

14From times immemorial every initiate before
entering on his supreme trial of initiation, in antiquity as at the present
time, pronounced these sacramental words . . . “And I swear to give up my life
for the salvation of my brothers, which constitute the whole mankind if called
upon, and to die in the defence of truth. . . .”